Statebred trio to sort out pecking order

Cake Pop, Strike Your Light, and Tough It Up have become familiar rivals, exchanging decisions in stakes company over the past nine months. They get a rubber match in Saturday’s $75,000 Daniel Stearns Cleveland Gold Cup for Ohiobred 3-year-olds at Thistledown.

The 1 1/8-mile race on the main track will mark the fourth time all three have lined up in the same starting gate, with each having won once. Tough It Up struck first, closing inside under regular rider John McKee to win the Juvenile Stakes last October at Mahoning Valley. Strike Your Light – who, like Tough It Up, is a Maccabee Farm homebred trained by Thomas Drury Jr. – finished third, and Cake Pop was fifth in the 1 1/16-mile race.

The three then went their separate ways before meeting May 6 in the Tall Stack Stakes, a sprint at Belterra Park. Cake Pop, a homebred for Penny and Michael Lauer, aired by four lengths over Strike Your Light. Tough It Up was fifth in the only unplaced effort of his career. It was the second stakes win for Cake Pop, who also has placed in two stakes, his accomplished record making him the 5-2 morning-line favorite for the Cleveland Gold Cup under Manoel Cruz.

Strike Your Light owns the most recent victory among the three, clearing by five lengths under Malcolm Franklin in the Green Carpet Stakes on May 28, going 1 1/16 miles on the Belterra turf. Tough It Up was second by a half-length over Cake Pop. Strike Your Light, in his first turf race, earned a Beyer Speed Figure of 82 – the top last-out number in this field. Cake Pop posted a 74 in winning the Tall Stack.

Strike Your Light and Tough It Up both come straight into the Cleveland Gold Cup from

the Green Carpet; Cake Pop finished fifth in the Sydney Gendelman Memorial Handicap on June 10 on the Belterra turf.

Tough It Up, Strike Your Light, and Cake Pop will line up side by side in posts 4 through 6 in the short field. Their competition consists of Coincidentally, a stakes winner at Mahoning Valley; stakes-placed Hansenation; and Shadeslayer, who is 2 for 2 lifetime but is trying stakes company for the first time.